Goat and strawberry

It was Strawberry Fair last Saturday. This is most likely (since I haven't taken the time to look up the facts) the biggest fair in the Cambridge calendar. It fills Midsummer Common with people, food, music, stalls and fun. It the one day out of the year that no one will look at you twice if you walk around in a pink tutu and top hat (or something similarly bizarre). There wasn't a food culture missing representation. Neil and I tried a goat curry with rice and peas (beans). It was fabulous! So juicy and flavourful! It contained a few too many bones, but that wouldn't keep me from getting one again.
The best part of the day is that it brings out the hippies in full force. There are fair trade, free clothing (yes, someone put up a washing line with clothes and said, free to take), charity shops and look-what-I-made stalls a plenty. Unfortunately there weren't as many stalls as I would have liked. I could have gone wander shopping for much longer. I bought a birthday gift for a friend though, which made me happy. Neil and I stopped at a wraps and sandwiches stand for a bottle of water which made us so very happy. The label said that 100% of the profits from the sale of the water would be given to water projects for communities in need. 100%!!
We finished off our trip to the fair with a bag of donuts and a sit down by one of the stages. The music was rubbish unfortunately, so we didn't stay longer. Plus Christopher was visiting and didn't fancy braving the crowds. So we went home and danced the night away.

Toronto

It was a great 5 day get away, but I'm not sure what we would have done if we'd stayed much longer. We're not museum people; I get bored incredibly quickly in a museum. So the many museums were not an option. We thought about going to the zoo, but it seemed incredibly complicated to get there by public transport (we didn't rent a car and the subway train only traveled so far out of town, then we couldn't find bus information and our hotel was going to charge us $5 for 2 minutes of Internet time). There were a couple of restaurants that would have probably been intriguing if our stomachs ever knew what time zone they were in.

I supposed if we'd stayed for the weekend there would have been a festival on the harbourfront which would have been fun.

What we did do in Toronto was enough for a great 5 day break. By Friday we were ready to go home. We hadn't stayed too long, we didn't need more time, it was perfect!

The things we did in Toronto include:
1. Walking all over town.
2. Visiting the harbourfront on a very windy morning (discovering a Canadian pirate ship, and if you don't believe me then check out this close up the ship's flags).
3. Wandering through Chinatown, admiring the many many markets and bakeries.4. Finding a relaxed fairtrade coffee shop.
5. Walking all over town.
6. Walking across town for a beautiful breakfast.7. Attending a show at one of the many theatres. (We saw Doubt by John Patrick Shanley.)
8. Walking across town again in search of Portugal Village.9. Finding Village by the Grange and choosing between so many world cuisines.9. Discovering Kensington Market feels remarkably like home.
10. Walking and walking and walking but still never find Portugal Village.
11. Stopping to eat a DQ strawberry cheesecake blizzard. :-)
12. Wander shopping in the Eaton Centre and admiring the very pretty and expensive table design at Pottery Barn.
13. Eating supper at the suprisingly small and cozy Fisherman's Warf... where the seafood platter is tasty but so very filling!
14. Watching Up in 3D.

When we took refuge from walking in our hotel room I watched the Food Network which was inspiring. (Which reminds me that I want to look up a couple of recipes I saw.)

I am so happy we went and I'm so happy to be home. I like a holiday that encourages me to appreciate the moment.

For Andrea

Some lilacs for you...




... because you seem to need a smile, and because they remind of that day you and I took a lilac walk at St. Ben's. I'm so thankful for that memory and happy to share it with you.

Failed

So my list was not achieved. I failed. But I was productive in so many other ways.

First thing in the morning, even before changing out of my pajamas I set about transplanting (which was on my list). The grass was still too short to handle but I could move the rest. They're now sitting on the top shelf of the green house attempting to grow even bigger (hopefully).

Straight after that I planted some more pea seeds. This is where my productivity went astray, but in my defense I have been saying I need to do this for weeks.

As it was getting nicer and nicer outside I decided to keep gardening. So I filled the potato bags (more soil hopefully means more roots which means more potatoes!).

Then it was on to planting more lettuce leaves so we have successive crops for good salads this summer.

After all this I started on the dishes. I'm the type of person that leaves the dishes until I have enough to warrant an entire sink full of water. Which is usually just three times a week. While doing the dishes Neil arose, made us breakfast burritos and then we began a productive day together. It revolved around the drilling jobs we've been accumulating. First we put up the key safe which was easier than expected. Then we took down the small monitor in the living room and hung it on the wall in my study. I now am such a geek that I have two monitors to use at the same time (and I love it!).Then we moved on to hanging the new television in the living room. As you can see we still need to work on hiding the many cables connected to the television (this is the thing I hate about appliances). After all this we relaxed a little, had dinner and then Neil finished off the day by planting some more corn and climbing beans.

It was a very productive day. All of it needed to be done. So now I'm wondering if it's my list writing skills that I should be working on instead of my ability to stick to a plan. I think I learned that I should feel prouder of what I do get done than I feel guilty about what I don't achieve. Ah, those life lessons.

my birthday bash

So I turned 30 on the 13th... and I celebrated! There's nothing I can do about being older so I enjoy the excuse to have fun. Neil spoiled me with a trip to London. We went to Yo Sushi! in Victoria train station for lunch then walked to our hotel to check in and relax until going to a show. My big treat was tickets (good tickets) to see Wicked.

It was a very good show. The story was clever and very thorough. The songs were wonderfully written (I was a little put off by the nasal voices of both the main parts). But the most spectacular was the stage design. It was innovative, clever, engaging and inspiring. There was lots of flying and the entire stage space was well used from top to bottom! It couldn't have been better!
The next day we woke up late and enjoyed a lie-in before wandering out to the shops. The hotel had a computer in the room to help us choose our lunch destination... but it was a Mac! Before leaving London we had a late lunch at Mango Tree which was really lovely. I ordered the wrong thing, it tasted really nice and was full of my favorite things (such as razor clams and mushrooms) but there was more chili than I had planned on which meant my mouth was in pain after just a few bites. Luckily, Neil thought it was very tasty, so he finished it while I finished his lobster tempura. The trade was not disappointing.

When we arrived back in Cambridge we wandered home to meet up with our friend Christopher. He'd decorated the kitchen in streamers and balloons. We went to a late dinner together at Asia which was a great surprise. Christopher brought gifts to unwrap at the restaurant (a parsley shredder and fabulous orange teaspoons), but the big gift was back at home. It was an orange tea tray laid out on our bed, impressively wrapped and decorated with Happy Birthday confetti. So much fun!

We finished the celebration with hours of fun playing Rayman's Raving Rabids TV. Who knew dancing, playing music and driving with your bum could be so entertaining?!

The next morning I discovered I'd missed cleaning up all the confetti the night before. Oops!

Fusion burrito

Yesterday I procrastinated in a useful way by feeding myself with a fridge dump. It would have been much faster to eat a packet of soup (which I just steam fro 15 minutes, pour in a bowl and add crunch factor), but I had half a wedge of brie to use up and a chicken thigh as well. So using a few other opened ingredients in the fridge I made this:


The list of ingredients:
a herby flour tortilla
some brie
cranberry sauce
small handful of rocket
a skinless chicken thigh fillet
a spring onion
Japanese soy sauce
minced garlic
button mushrooms

Despite the list of ingredients it was very tasty. Lacked a bit of zing and crunch, but for an experiment I was quite impressed. Technically it wasn't a burrito because I didn't fry it once wrapped, but it would have been better if I had.

Pasta & cheese

The other day a friend of mine mentioned she had mac & cheese for her birthday, and since then I've been craving mac & cheese with a hotdog. I could have ordered Kraft's box kit online, waited for it to arrive cooked it with a not very nice hotdog from a jar I bought at the grocery store since the only way you can buy mac and cheese here is in a can and not the same. I was impatient though and trying to be more organic in my food selection (for the planet, not because I think my body can't handle ingesting chemicals)... so today I came up with this:


I used: organic spinach pasta twirls, organic Cumberland sausages, some shredded organic cheddar cheese, and, because I thought it would be good for me to eat some more vegetables with, some quartered organic cherry tomatoes. It was tasty, but nothing like mac & cheese with hotdogs. Does Kraft make an organic version of their cheese and macaroni?

Monday

On Monday I took a photo along my walk to work because I was so happy to be walking to work in crisp and crunchy snow - even if it was dark and chilly.The photo isn't much but I'd like to use the photo in my first digital scrapbooking layout for an album I'm thinking of creating. The project is a scrapbook of one layout for each week of 2009 - or whatever year I get around to the album. I'm afraid of not seeing the project through though, thus causing guilt and frustration with a lack of achievement. Is this a lesson for me in knowing when to say no? What's the harm in such a creative and fun project? It could help me to remember that things happen in my life (did anyone else feel like 2008 went by in a blur or was it just me?). It could also be yet another subconscious procrastination tool to keep me from my studying. This is a complicated decision.

Halloween pumpkins afire

We had our annual Halloween celebrations last night which ended with our pumpkin lighting extravaganza. We were happy to have Michele join us this year and our dress-up theme (characters/people from Mythbusters) didn't detract from the night at all. I always worry that theme parties impose too much pressure on the fun. Instead it added a very creative element and a little bit of experimenting to the festivities.

Enjoy some photos of the night...

Autumn

I know I've been a little absent. But that's life right? Sometimes you gotta just live it.

Today's HSMSHS prompt: Autumnal - A characteristic of or occuring in Autumn.

This is my favorite time of year. I love the colors. I love feeling comfortable wearing a scarf and mittens without a coat. I truly look forward to taking walks to see orange and gold and red trees, to pick wild berries and to come home with a warm body (having been wrapped up in a scarf and mittens) but a chilled nose. Few things in life make me so peacefully happy.

A new perspective

Neil and I took a walk along the River Cam on Saturday. This is not unusual since we live so close and it's a lovely walk leading us right to the grocery store. But Saturday we crossed the nearest bridge (we haven't done this in years!) and walked the opposite direction to usual. I don't know if it's up river or down, but on our side of the river we can only walk towards town because to go the other way we would run into a fence and private land quickly. The other side of the river has a gravel path for walkers, cyclists and dogs that leads all the way to Ely supposedly. Saturday we decided to find out just how far we could go. We're not sure where we walked to, and the path continued on, but I decided we should return to Cambridge for a pint at the nearest pub and a study afternoon (well, what was left of it). I love walking in Autumn because you can walk in sunshine without getting sweaty. I especially like when the weather is just cold enough to go walking with a scarf and mittens but not so cold you have to wear a coat. I know, I'm weird. Perhaps next weekend when I've finished my essay and a report (I have two to write) we will attempt the walk again. It's beautiful! (If you come visit I will take you on a walk by the river, even if I still don't know where the path leads.)

Oh, the picture is from our way back. There was an old tree stump jutting out of the hedge as you can see. Although Neil's shoulder was sore he offered to climb up so I could take a photo. It's not that he wanted his photo taken; it's that his inner boy loves to climb on things but his outer man needed an excuse.

juicy floating combo

I comblined the HSMS prompts from yesterday (floating) and today (juicy).

I have an obsession with "crunch factor." I like food that has a crunch (only when appropriate, I do not want crunchy cake). I like my vegetables undercooked rather than risk over cooking them. I add seeds to my salads to ensure a nice crunch in every bite. My favorite salad when I worked at camp was cottage cheese, raisins and sunflower seeds because it was soft, sweet and crunchy! (And it was less frightening than the aging lettuce.) This obsession means I like to float croûtons on my daily bowl of soup. My favorite is Bertolli's Pepite, but today I had generic croûtons that met my crunchy needs.

And peaking out from behind is my answer to today's prompt- juicy. What you just barely see between my bowl of soup and very messy desk is a Pink Lady apple. It is currently my favorite variety of apple. I still enjoy a nice, crisp, tart green apple... but Pink Ladies are reliable - always sweet, always crisp, always juicy. But not as juicy as a pear-- who wants a fruit to be so juicy it dribbles down your chin?

I feel like I should explain why my desk is messy (it's much messier than I let you see in this photo). The truth is that my desk is almost always strewn with papers. Today it was extra messy because I had a complicated bit of forms to fill out and hadn't cleared up the piles of paper already existing on my desk. If there is one thing I have learned about myself it's that I have a natural piling system for filing. Not the most efficient system, but it works. It's something I should work on, but there's not much time to work on it at the moment. Perhaps I will rid myself of that fault one day... or perhaps it will just always be part of who I am. For now it's something I'm not going to worry about.

Blue

So I was supposed to be looking for a 'row' of something today as that is the HS/MS word prompt... but instead I saw this plant with beautiful blue flowers growing next to a rubbish bin and post box. I like how observant this photo prompt thing is making me. Hurray for keeping the eyes open!

It's official

I am now a coffee drinker.

Every morning since last Sunday I have had a cup of coffee (with milk and sweetener). It started because I had no Pepsi Max on Sunday and if I didn't have at least one glass of caffeine I was going to end up with a headache that no tablet would help (unless it was a tablet of caffeine). So I had a very milky and very sweet cup of coffee. It tasted nice. Over the week I have slowly reduced the sweetness - I'm down to two sweeteners now.

Why don't I just deal with the headaches and kick the caffeine addiction? It would be cheaper, it would probably be better for me (although the calories in one cup of coffee each day is manageable) and I my happiness wouldn't be dependent on caffeine anymore. I like flavor. I drink water, but sometimes I crave flavor. So now I'm a coffee drinker.

packet lunch

Each working day, when I get home, my cats are VERY ready for me to feed them. Maegan is waitin' atop the fridge for love and her biscuits whereas Owen greets me at the door with a yell and won't leave me alone until I set down his watery chicken filled bowl. Then I get to sort out my lunch. The last few months, apart from a day here and there when I had leftovers or a purchased sandwich, my lunch has been soup - soup because it fills me up, it's easy to heat up in the steamer and it's easy to count the calories.

Today Maegan had a special treat of wet food for lunch thanks to Ocado's penchant for giving away free stuff - making today a complete packet lunch.

Sweet

So it took a week. But I stood on one of the busiest roads in Cambridge today and snapped this photo, prompted by two things.


1) Today's HS/MS prompt word is sweet.
2) On Saturday Neil pointed out this ad while we were on the bus and I couldn't get a good look at it. He is a complete Cadbury's chocolate addict and was very interested that Cadbury's has a new product out... but we didn't know what it was, he'd just noticed the ad without having a good look. On my walk home today I saw this ad and I'm sorry to report that it's chocolate with bits in it. The cranberry and granola bar looks tasty to me, but Neil is a chocolate bar purist (nothing with bits in it, unless it's a candy bar or a cream egg). Sorry sweetie.

September: outlook optimistic

So today felt really great. Nothing amazing happened, and it was hard to get my bum out of bed - but it was a good day. I think it's because as a kid I was used to September being the 'start of the year' because of school. And perhaps because I still work in academia I feel like it's the start of the year (although our students don't come back for a few more weeks). The start of the year is always good - I always feel like anything (good) can happen.

Today I was also sort of surprised (I knew it was coming, I just hadn't remembered it could be today) by starting my training for a new part of my job. It's a little surreal to be in the same job for 6.5 years but beginning training for something totally new. I joined the ILL (Inter-library loans) team today and spent two hours learning the basics and sending new loan requests to the British Library. I had a bad caffeine withdrawal headache and a case of persistent yawning... but I still totally enjoyed it. I've known that this was coming since June, but I didn't think it would be so organized as to begin precisely on the first day of September.

I also came home to discover that my research problems were fixed and I could get on with an assignment I'm determined to finish by the 20th of September. Determined!

My camera came with me to work today so that I could finally take part in the photo blog that I read regularly. The word prompt was gate though, and caused two problems: 1. I wasn't inspired by any of the many gates I pass on my way home (it's about 37 minutes / 2 miles from work to home). And 2. I was struck by a fear of looking silly if the owner of the gate noticed me or by the traffic. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get over that and be able to take part. I did take a picture of my 'decorative corn' plants... for some reason I'm quite happy with them.

Pizza! Pizza!

This is such an easy pizza dough recipe that I thought some people might actually want to know about it. It was developed (based on existing techniques and recipes) by Neil.

The recipe:

Group A

150g of strong bread flour
1tsp of sugar
2tsps of yeast
250g of warm water (hand hot)

Group B
30g of oil
1tsp of salt
250g of strong bread flour

Mix ingredients of Group A together in a large bowl then set aside (someplace kinda warm and not drafty is good) to double in size. Then add ingredients of Group B, knead about 10 minutes (we rarely ever knead for more than 3 minutes if making pizza dough) and set aside to rise again. Use for pizza crust, bread, rolls, even donuts.

On Monday night we used it, with some slight alterations*, to make this...... and a small deep dish pizza that was so tasty we couldn't wait to dive in before I took a photo. We also used our latest tomato harvest to make the tomato sauce and tomato slices. Maybe someday we'll be able to make a pizza entirely from ingredients in our garden. Lets see, we'll need a wheat field, a mushroom forest, a cow or buffalo, a sugar cane field, onions, tomatoes and herbs. 3 out of 7 already!

* These alterations were due to a lack of plain bread flour and my herb fixation. I had enough strong plain bread flour to start the dough, but not enough when adding group B. So I used strong soft grain bread flour which gave a really nice nutty flavour and a bit of crunch. I also added some fresh chopped rosemary to the dough which made it smell fantastic!

And this week...

Looks like I'm turning into a weekly blogger. I don't want to be, I've discovered there are usually enough things on my mind to blog every day or two. I have been busy, but I've also been lazy lately and one of the victims of my laziness has been this blog.

Last week I was obsessed with reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. I'm going to blog about that on another day because my mind is still swimming with thoughts about that incredibly original novel.

This past weekend Neil and I did something totally unusual for us; we rented a car and didn't go to either Ikea or a garden centre. LOL! The purpose of renting the car was to go to Clowne, Derbyshire to meet our new niece. She was utterly tiny and utterly gorgeous. Neil was smitten. He only gave up holding her because she had to feed. We got in the car to go home and both wished that we lived closer so we could hold her and spoil her more often. But we'll do our best to love her and spoil her from a distance.

On Sunday we drove to Great Yarmouth, Norfolk for a bit of seaside walking, sunning and sand castle making. Some pictures:
The sun came out late but was most welcome. We ate too much, although it felt like we didn't eat much at all. I tried my first cockle. It was edible, but too gritty to eat again by choice. That was the best seaside treat I've ever had: a pot of prawns, cockles, king prawns and crab sticks. The only shame was that it was served in a polystyrene cup. The cup was most useful for making the top of our castle though, as we didn't come prepared with bucket and spade. Next on my list of seafood to try is the whelk.

Today I'm trying to focus on my studies by taking regular breaks so I can intensely study in between. Not working so far, but I'm trying. The next break will be to collect the ripe tomatoes from the garden for tonight's pizza making, but before that a lot of reading about collection management.

today's garden harvest

Neil and I collected a good looking harvest from our modest vegetable garden today. What do you think?


This is the second harvest of the tomatoes and potatoes. The first harvests were cooked and eaten right away (and I didn't think of taking a photo until we'd sate back with full tummies). They made delicious roast potatoes and a tasty tomato sauce, respectively. It is the final harvest of beans though, I pulled out the poor plants today which have been devastated by slugs, snails and caterpillars this year but still provided beans a plenty, they were some hard workin' organic dwarf bean plants!

We also took in a crazy tomato today.


Neil thinks it looks like an angel; I think it looks like a rabbit; what do you think? (Don't say tomato, because we know it's a tomato.)